There is a growing interest in in-vehicle computing applications for autonomous vehicles. Autonomous self-driving vehicles are required to sense the surroundings, navigate through obstacles and paths, and make their own decisions without human interruption. Autonomous vehicles can achieve the sensing of the surroundings using a variety of on-board computing and sensing resources such as a radar, a light detection and ranging (LIDAR), a global positioning system (GPS), an odometer, and a computer-aided vision. Autonomous driving therefore requires a host of peripheral sensors that can deliver sensory data to processing elements. In addition, autonomous driving can be well served by gathering road conditions, restrictions (e.g., speed limits), and other information from the cloud and Internet sources, for example, Google Maps, CalTrans, Waze®, cellular phone towers, etc. Moreover, in accidental and unpredictable events such as a collision and a violation, drivers of the vehicle can benefit from having a video recording. Because collisions can occur from any direction, it is desirable to have a video that can provide a wide-angle visibility such as a 360° video camera.
The recording media of vehicle conditions and sensory information including video recording is desired to be secure and protected. A black box can survive after a crash or any other event while providing secure retention of the recorded data received from various components of the vehicle (e.g., engine, brakes) and audio and video recording from the cabin. All such data should be securely retained until deliberately deleted or over-written after a recovery of the data by an authorized party.